It is not to be forgotten that among those who rendered technical service of a high order during the World War was[b] Auguste J. Paris, Jr.[/b], Doctor of Science, who is a resident of Bradford, and from 1904 to date has maintained a laboratory in that city. Long prior to the war he announced from his workshop, at Bingham, important discoveries pertaining to the manufacture of gasoline. At the outbreak of the war he was conducting a laboratory at Charleston, W. VA. He promptly tendered his services to the government and the use of his experimental station. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, reporting to the President in November, 1918, by Dr. C. D. Walcott (Secretary Smithsonian Institution), Chairman of Executive Committee, says: "Research and experiment have been conducted by Messrs. Paris at Charleston in full cooperation with and under the direction of this committee. The subjects investigated during the year are as follows":

I. Gasoline direct from crude petroleum without stills, cleaned without the use of acid or alkali.

2. First distillate, or crude benzine, cleaned and purified without the use of acid or alkali.

3. Natural neutral gasoline.

4. Increase yield of straight paraffin from crude oil.

5. Separation of gasoline from crude oil by mechanical means.

The report (numbered 42) of Dr. Paris and his brother, Lieut. W. Francklyn Paris, his associate, submitted the results of their experiments. Of this Dr. Walcott, reporting to the Adjutant-General under date of January 16, 1919, says:

"The work has been continued to a point where remarkable results have
been established, inasmuch as by this new method the world's production of gasoline, as shown by demonstration before representatives of this Committee and of the British Military Mission, and as outlined in Report No. 42, of this Committee, will be increased by an amount now estimated to be eighty per cent."

The discoveries of Dr. Paris leading to the manufacture of gasoline from natural gas and to the cracking process by which the quantity of product from oil and gas has been greatly multiplied was the opening of a secondary era in the oil and gas industry. The producer is too apt to pay all homage to the drill rather than to the retort, forgetful that it was by the report of Professor Silliman that Seneca Oil was ushered into the civilized world, its field of utility and its commercial possibilities foretold. So fifty years later Dr. Paris and his compeers, in the laboratories of DuPont, the Standard and the Geological Survey, by subtle combination and intricate process, have opened door after door leading to unknown sources of hidden wealth.

And again it is to the credit of the county of McKean that it was within its borders at Bingham Station, in the year 1907, that the crude, extemporaneous machine here portrayed, responding to the magic control of Auguste Paris, first separated gasoline from natural gas.